If you have followed the story this far, you know that one of the main reasons I was in Nairobi was to visit Ken and his students at Filamajuani. Well after a few days attending the Fearless conference, which was great, I was able to spend some time with Ken.

The plan was to take the members of our team from Mariners to Kibera, which is the largest urban slum in Africa. Ken works with students that live in Kibera and teaches them about the elements of story, how to use cameras, audio and teaches them the craft of filmmaking – right in the middle of the largest urban slum in Africa.

We took about 20 team members to Kibera and split up into two teams. Each team of people from Mariners would join up with students from FJ and we would together come up with a story to film about one of two topics, hope or love. My team decided to take Love. We sat together for a short time and worked together to come up with a very short look at two people, a boy and a girl, the boy from America and the girl from Kenya. They meet at a Chapati stand in Kibera, we called it “Chapati Love”. We cast our characters, outlined a script and within 30 minutes we were on our way deep into Kibera to find our main location, a Chapati stand.

Ken gave me the role of Director of Photography and my new friend Shireesh the role of Director. We had the help of the students from FJ, who really knew what they were doing. But now it was time to set up our first shot. Our plan was to have our leading man, Zack, come walking down toward our Chapati stand along the railroad tracks that run through the middle of Kibera. So I took a look up the hill and said, “Well, in order to get Zack coming down the hill coming this way we will need to step back…” and as I stepped back, I fell in to a hole of water, mud, sewage and rats – that I didn’t know was directly one step behind me. Here is a picture of that hole…

So, on our very first shot, before we even got the camera ready to shoot, I was basically covered in shit from the waist down. As if that wasn’t bad enough, in an effort to catch myself with my hands as I fell backwards I cut my right arm on the cement sewer/drainage pipe bordering the pool. So, very quickly everyone came to my aide and pulled me up. Several people quickly pulled out clean water, bactine, neosporin, bandaids and cleaned my bloody arm off and quickly bandaged me up. Other than feeling really stupid and humiliated, I was ready to do what I have been waiting to do – film with these students. After assuring everyone, that I was fine – we set up our first shot.

(Picture of the arm, post clean-up back at the hotel, 12 bandaids and a full tube of neosporin)

We shot our movie so quick because of our schedule, but we had a blast doing it. Here is a very quick edit, of our very quick shoot. Enjoy.

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